


Vigilantes at Law

by jazzonia



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Suits (TV)
Genre: Aliases, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Eventual Smut, Gen, Legal Drama, M/M, New York City, Post-Battle of New York (Marvel), Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-14 02:11:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4546173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzonia/pseuds/jazzonia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt Murdock is the devil of Hell’s Kitchen.</p><p>Harvey Specter is its ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vigilantes at Law

If he knew his pro bono work would make him a tabloid star Harvey never would have bothered. 

He—or rather, Mike and the associate pool—had cranked through a lot of insurance claims in the couple years after the Battle of New York. By its third anniversary midtown was mostly rebuilt and property values had started to climb again, inciting a rush of tenant buyouts as big developers tried to snap up old buildings cheaply. Hundreds of renters appealed to the city with evidence of neglect, abuse and strong-arming. Harvey, between Mike’s soft spot for tenant advocacy cases and his own love for taking down parasitic developers, was all too happy to take them on.

So one case led to another, and before long Harvey had prevented illegal evictions in four buildings along the same stretch of Tenth Avenue. He didn’t think people _lived_ on Tenth, but there they were, and anyway he sort of liked reading the character attestations the clients wrote for one another. 

It became a trend, then a theme, then a habit. Harvey nurtured contacts at real estate companies and Mike kept his ear to the ground for sob stories on the West Side, and for a few hours every month they bullied developers into dropping cases against working-class New Yorkers in Hell’s Kitchen.

“CASPER THE FRIENDLY LAWYER” was the first sign of trouble. The Post’s tasteless headlines aside, it was rather attentive reporting—Harvey bet it was a summer intern, bored and working the courthouse beat, who put two and two together in time to snap the blurry photo with their cell phone. Harvey shouldn’t have been at the courthouse at all, but sometimes opposing counsel was best intimidated in person. Judge Muñoz was sympathetic, her chambers were intimidating, and he _needed_ to neutralize the threat of litigation. No sense in dragging his 77-year-old client from her rent-controlled apartment down to Court Square—not to mention Harvey himself, who had paying clients to see—for an actual appearance in the height of July’s heat. 

How the reporter realized what case he was working, he didn’t know, but two days after his jaunt to court there was a write-up on a mysterious lawyer nobly fighting the forces of corporate greed and gentrification in Hell’s Kitchen. Alongside the write-up was an overexposed photo of Harvey’s suited silhouette exiting the courthouse, hair haloed out into white by the sun. 

Harvey glanced at it, snorted, and gave the paper back to Donna without a second thought. 

By the next case he’s become “The Ghost Lawyer of Hell’s Kitchen.” The case after that makes him a regular feature, his exploits covered in a column titled “Ghost Watch” with a cute cartoon rendering of Casper in a suit. After greeting Harvey one morning by saying “Boo!”, Mike was forbidden from referencing the persona at the office.

The Devil came knocking four weeks and two articles later.

***

It was half past midnight and he’d been home three minutes when a shadow flickered in the corner of Harvey’s eye. He crossed the kitchen, slow, controlled, and palmed a twelve-inch chef’s knife. Before he could turn, the patio doors opened to reveal a masked man silhouetted in the waxing moon’s light. 

“You can put the knife down,” the Devil said.

Harvey’s lip curled. “Want me to make you some coffee, too?”

“If I have some now I’ll never sleep.”

“Cute, kid.” They were just a few paces apart. He could see that the Devil had tight skin and unlined mouth—Harvey’d be shocked if he was even thirty. “What are you doing here?”

“I had to meet the Ghost.”

“And what makes you think I’m—”

“No need to pretend, Mr. Specter. And aren’t you glad someone else can appreciate the pun?”

“They’re not the first to make it.”

“It’s no ‘Headless Body in Topless Bar,’ to be sure. Trust the _Post_ to get it right accidentally.” 

“Can we cut to the chase here, Mephistopheles? Are you going to tell me to back off your territory or something?” 

The Devil smirked. “Didn’t peg you for a classics man.”

“Don’t get off-topic.” 

“There are forces at work here bigger than both of us, Mr. Specter. I’d hate to see you caught in the crossfire.” He took half a step forward on that last line, moonlight casting new shadows across his muscled arms and thighs.

“I’ve stood up to men more powerful than you can imagine.”

“With all of New York watching?”

Harvey smiled, all teeth and no heart. “Thanks for the house call. Next time I’ll grab my gun.”

“Until then,” the Devil said, and was gone.

***

Harvey paid attention to the news after that. 

The Devil was more active than he’d realized. Every second or third night there was a news item about a thwarted robbery or rape or carjacking, sometimes identifying the Devil and sometimes not. The patterns were easy enough to guess at: crimes in Midtown West reported between midnight and four, thwarted with only as much violence as necessary, more often than not over before the victims noticed. Sometimes a camera would catch him, and sometimes a witness would see a black-clad figure retreating to the rooftops. 

Donna noticed his new hobby, of course, but she didn’t make fun of him like he expected. It turned out the Devil had saved the life of her cousin Karen weeks earlier, showing up just as a would-be burglar broke into her apartment.

“Your cousin was almost killed and you didn’t tell me?”

“She barely told _me_ , Harvey. The last thing she needs is you storming the 18th Precinct demanding to know why no arrest has been made.”

“No one’s been _arrested_ yet?” 

Donna sighed. Mike, so far observing silently from Harvey’s office couch, said, “I think that means ‘case in point.’” 

“Yes, thank you, rookie. We’re heading to the courthouse anyway—I’ll send Mike into a clerk’s office to check on the investigation.” 

“You don’t have to,” Donna said, but Harvey could see she was relieved. “Karen works at a law firm. I’m sure her bosses are doing all they can.”

“Which firm?” 

“It’s brand new. Two kids turned down Landman and Zack to set up shop in a walkup on Ninth.”

Mike laughed. “That sounds fishy even to me.”

“Impoverished idealists, great.” Harvey stood, motioning for Mike to do the same. “We’ll look into it. Now let’s get downtown before it hits 100.”

***

Mike stopped outside the courthouse to buy a small coffee at the corner cart.

“Is it not hot enough for you?” Harvey said.

“All part of the plan, Obi-Wan.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me about that disastrous trailer.”

“Fair enough. Anyway, this is bribing coffee. The clerks have access to all open case files across the boroughs, and their offices are kept like ten degrees below the rest of the building.” Mike craned his neck around the metal detectors in the lobby to look inside the front office.

“I’m not going to ask why you know that.”

“Oh, sweet, Rhonda’s on. I got this.” 

“I’ll wait here. And don’t even think about saying what you want to say right now.”

“May the force—”

“Scram,” Harvey growled, and Mike turned away with a slight blush coloring his cheeks. Odd. 

Harvey let it pass without comment and looked down to check his email, pointedly not leaning against the grimy beige walls. He’d barely made it through two messages when Mike strode quickly back out of the office, trailed by two other men.

“I said, who’s asking, buddy? I don’t care what bullshit corporate business card you’re carrying, I’ll come after you for harassment.” The one doing the talking was medium-height, blonde, soft all over and dressed shabbily. The guy next to him looked sharper in a trim dark suit and round glasses. He held a thin white cane in one hand and a briefcase in the other, wrists flexing to keep his scraped knuckles turned inward.

“Problem?” Harvey said. The blonde barely flicked his eyes away from Mike, but the other man turned his head to stare at Harvey. 

“Misunderstanding.” 

“Deflect all you want, man, but you and your boss here are going to have a suit from Nelson & Murdock hit your desks tomorrow morning if you don’t tell us why you’re poking into Karen’s life.”

“These guys misheard my file request and thought it was for a client of theirs.”

“Colleague _,_ ” the dark-haired man interjected. “And I assure you I have _very_ good hearing.” 

Before Mike could respond, Harvey passed him the folio with statements for their upcoming briefing. “I’ll meet you upstairs, Mike.”

“What?”

“Go.” He did, shooting Harvey his ‘we’re _so_ talking about this later look’ over his shoulder as he did. Harvey turned to the other lawyers—baby lawyers, really; the ink probably still wet on their diplomas. “Now who wants to explain what’s really happening here?”

Blondie rolled his eyes. “Jeez, I’m having flashbacks to my corporate days.”

“Give us a second, Foggy,” the second guy said. Confusion flashed across his partner’s face.

“Are you—why?”

“Someone needs to check in with the Eighteenth and make sure no one else is accessing the files while these guys give us the run-around.”

“Oh. Okay, yeah, I’ll be right outside. We’re at the south entrance.” Foggy walked back out of the building, leaving the pair of them alone in the elevator bay. 

Harvey struck first.

“We meet again,” he said, relishing the Devil’s unconscious jerk of surprise.

“I don’t know—”

“Black suit, sunglasses, boxer hands, gravelly menacing hero voice? Wasn’t too hard to piece together.” Harvey leaned toward him. “Plus, I don’t forget a mouth like that.”

Murdock flinched, almost imperceptibly. “So here we both are.” 

“This would be quite the get for an enterprising reporter.”

“Is that a threat?”

“You know that’s not how I operate. In the interest of both of our careers, I will cease my review of Ms. Page’s case. Can I assume you’re handling that, one way or the other?”

Murdock nodded.

“Then I’ll consider it closed.”

“Why was your firm looking into it in the first place?”

“They weren’t—it was a personal inquiry at the request of my assistant. You can ask Karen for her number if and when you need representation.”

That elicited a disbelieving laugh. “You do know I’m a lawyer too, right?”

“Yes I do, Mr. Murdock, but I’m guessing from the goose chase you sent your partner on that he doesn’t know about your night job. A little hard to hide a client like the Devil in a two-man band.” Another flinch; if Harvey wasn’t trying to intimidate this guy he’d chew him out for having such an obvious tell. 

“Thanks for the offer, but I won’t be needing it.”

“That was a statement. An offer would sound more like, ‘Outside of business hours, you know where to find me.’”

Harvey hit the elevator call button and a car opened behind him. He stepped backward, enjoying a final view of Murdock’s stubborn, rigid posture and faintly red-tinged cheeks.

“I’ll be seeing you,” the Devil said. 

The doors closed. Only then did Harvey allow himself to grin; he had a funny feeling that despite the cane, Murdock had seen him just fine. 

**Author's Note:**

> More to come in this universe!


End file.
